Quirky Sense of Humor

     Two of my children have, what I will  euphemistically call, a quirky sense of humor.  Fortunately, our third child is normal.  My husband ridiculously suggested that they got it from me but, I'm forced to admit, I may have played some small part in it.  When other parents were reading their children bedtime stories like Tom Sawyer or Harry Potter, I was reading mine articles from Dave Barry and Patrick McManus. If you haven't read works by authors like them, you will never understand a quirky sense of humor, and you may think the people who have it are merely dangerous or insane. If only it were that simple.
     I blame cell phones.  In the good old days when you encountered a person talking to himself, you knew he was crazy.  Now you have to listen in on the one sided conversation for precious seconds to determine if they are tracking invisible yetis or updating the grocery list.  I believe the Bluetooth device was invented specifically for this, but I'm not sure what category that puts me in.
     I also blame television, of course.  We limited what our children watched, carefully screening for sex, language and violence, but we let them watch "The Red Green Show".  It was on PBS, how harmful could it be?  But apparently watching red neck Canadians at the Possum Lodge building and destroying things with duct tape can scar developing psyches.  We meant well.
     Our other familial affliction is that we have a dry sense of humor, dusty actually, the kind that drives literal minded firstborns crazy.  So when my son, with a straight face, told a stranger at a party that he was financing his college education by selling drugs, my firstborn mother-in-law felt compelled to explain that he was joking.  There is usually some killjoy around to explain "He/she was joking.", which is probably a good thing, it saves us the need to explain that to a law or mental health official.  I should also probably explain dry sense of humor to children.  When my nephew asked if he should sniff the open Kool Aid package I, assuming that by age 10 he knew better than to try, said, "Sure, take a big whiff."  When he stopped coughing, I explained what is meant by dry sense of humor.  He might have been better off if I had explained that before the dry Kool Aid, but this way he will remember the lesson better.
     At this point there is probably no remedy for our humor dysfunction and we will be doomed to enjoy "Calvin", "Dilbert" and other cynical comics the rest of our lives.  Just remember not to take us seriously, don't sniff the Kool Aid and, certainly, don't drink it.